50 INTERVIEWCOOKIE
on a board fully planing and that’s how it started. One day I
wondered if we could get a photo of me reading a book. So
we grabbed a novel from the book-swap rack which
happened to be a classic: Sense and Sensibility by Jane
Austen. It stayed in the photographer’s bag for two weeks
until we decided to go for it. I’ve never had so many people
giving me strange looks on the water blasting up and down
trying to hold this book! Blasting was fine but trying to tack or
gybe using two fingers without dropping it was interesting.
I’ve never read the book yet I have read one particular
sentence 10 times at least.
Yep I love that photo and the pondering-beard-stroking-
thing you’ve got going on. What else have you done?
We took a kids buggy out on a Gemini Tandem with a
member of staff. I originally strapped a doll into it to see if it
uk
WIND
SURFING
would work and to wind up the kids club manager to make it
look like I had taken a baby windsurfing (she went a bit
mental!) Another time I was teaching some kids and it got
too windy for them to hold on. I wanted to give them, one at
a time, a full-speed experience so we tied a rope to the front
with a wake boarding handle and I stuck a big sail on the
back. It was pretty exhausting and really hard work to control
it but great fun – the kids were buzzing as we were overtaking
so many people. On the Gemini our yoga instructor did a
headstand and a wheel at full speed!
I saw a recent photo in a suit!
That was supposed to be a James Bond thing and I had a
Martini glass in one hand. It was working well and I was
approaching the camera boat at full speed holding the empty
glass. Then, suddenly, I thought that it would look much